Jake grabbed a small mirror that was sitting on the hospital table next to his bed and held it up to his face. A white bandage covered his forehead. His bottom lip was busted. There was a gash on his cheek. A doctor he recognized from earlier came into the room. Jake didn’t care about how he looked right now. He only cared about his family.
“Piper?” Jake asked the doctor.
“Some broken bones, but she’s going to be OK.”
Relief poured through him. “Sarah?”
The grim expression on the doctor’s face said everything. “I’m sorry, Mr. Slater.”
Jake’s first thought was his daughter. “Does Piper know?”
The doctor shook his head. “We thought you might want to be there.”
Jake ignored the doctor’s insistence on a wheelchair and limped down the hallway to his daughter’s hospital room. She looked tiny in the bed, like she was six years old. Her eyes were closed. A white bandage covered half her face. A nurse was messing with a machine but left when Jake sidled up next to the bed. He wanted to scoop up his baby and hold her close to him, but he knew he couldn’t do that right now. Her body was broken. And within minutes, her heart would be shattered, too. He leaned over her, which caused her eyes to flutter open. She blinked several times, and then she was aware of him.
“Daddy!”
She reached for him. He held her gently, tears pouring down his cheeks. He tried to fight them off—he wanted to be strong for her right now—but he couldn’t help it. Her world was about to be rocked. Jake knew the feeling. His mother had died in a car accident when he was only ten. He’d never forget the moment his dad came into his bedroom and shared the news with him, like a brand permanently burned into his chest. It devastated him to put that same brand into his daughter right now.
“Where’s Mommy?” Piper asked.
Jake swallowed. There was no way to cloak this news. He just had to be honest with her. “She’s gone, baby. Mom is gone.”
The sound his daughter made next frightened him. He’d never heard an audible gasp quite like that before. Then tears. Then fighting for breath. Jake held her trembling body in his arms, rocking her gently.
“I’m here, baby. I’m here.” He just kept repeating it over and over again. “We’re going to be OK. I promise. I’m here. You and me. Always.”
Turning on the hot water, Jake splashed his face and tried to get himself cleaned up. He noticed that his hands were still really shaking. But it was no longer from being cold. It was the absolute shock of his new reality. Piper had been taken. Her life was in danger. Caitlin had been shot and killed. His niece was dead. And he was on the run from the police. It was impossible to wrap his mind around it all. Because he’d fled, Jake figured his involvement was no longer in doubt by the police. Unless they’d discovered contrary evidence—which he prayed they did—the police most certainly now viewed him as a primary suspect. But it would all be worth it if he got Piper back tonight.
Jake took several deep breaths and let them out slowly. He had to stay calm and focused. Continuing to freak out was going to get him nowhere fast—it certainly wasn’t going to help him find Piper. He needed to think as clearly as possible. He stuffed his wet clothes and jacket in the bottom of an oversize trash can. Then he hurried back into the football offices and sat down inside his old head coach’s office, which had now been taken over by his best friend and former assistant coach, Drew Beamer. He wiggled the mouse on the desktop, watched the computer screen come to life. He would need a password to access the system. Drew was a simple guy. Jake doubted he had a password that was too complicated. First he typed in Drew’s wife’s name: Maggie. Denied. He then tried his son’s name: Zach. Denied. Jake racked his brain. Drew had gone to college with him back at Sam Houston State and played tight end on the team. Jake typed in Bearkats, the school mascot. Bingo. Access granted.
Pulling up Google on the desktop, Jake typed Judd McGee and Address, hoping to find a quick answer to where Judd lived. But nothing obvious popped up. He tried different versions of the same search but still came up empty-handed. The man’s address was not listed anywhere. How was he going to find it? He then typed in Judd McGee and the name Beth. That didn’t pull up anything, either. He exited out of Google and began searching the desktop screen for other folders that might have student contact information. He knew they had something like that on the school server. Jake searched through a dozen different screen folders but couldn’t locate anything like it.